


Tattoos: A Conversation (or why according to La’gaan, Eddie needs to just stop talking)

by The_Mouse_of_Anon



Series: AquaFan Week (Devilfish Ahoy!) [1]
Category: Teen Titans (Comics), Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: AquaFan Week 2016, Day 1: Tattoos, Eddie you're going to make La'gaan choke on his own spit, Kaldur is a beauty school drop-out?, M/M, Tattoos, mention of Kaldur, pre-Devilfish fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-07
Updated: 2017-01-07
Packaged: 2018-09-15 10:57:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9231848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Mouse_of_Anon/pseuds/The_Mouse_of_Anon
Summary: Theirs was an odd friendship, born out of the fact that Eddie was relentlessly kind and considerate, and he just refused to be put off by how temperamental La’gaan could be. Eddie had kind of inflicted himself on La’gaan, and once La’gaan had stopped fighting it had gotten easier. Which was probably why La'gaan was willing to put up with Eddie's prying anddefinitelyhad nothing to do with enjoying Eddie's company more than he should.((Written for Day 1 of AquaFan Week 2016.))





	

**Author's Note:**

> For anyone curious, yes this series takes place in the same world as _I Tried to Warn You_. Also, this series contains my interpretation of Eddie as he might be in the YJ-universe, so any tweaks to his character or history are entirely my own. The actual official sequel for _I Tried to Warn You_ is taking me a while (it's a huge fic), but in the meantime here's the first of seven fics with a ton of Devilfish feels. n.n

“So yours just don’t show up unless you’re in pufferfish-mode?” Eddie asked, his already bright yellow eyes glowing just a bit brighter in curiosity.

La’gaan nodded and tried to ignore how distracting Eddie’s hand on his shoulder was. Theirs was an odd friendship, born out of the fact that Eddie was relentlessly kind and considerate as well as the fact that he just refused to be put off by how temperamental La’gaan could be. To be truthful, Eddie had kind of inflicted himself on La’gaan— once La’gaan had stopped fighting it and got over his paranoia it had been easier. 

It was certainly nice to know that there was at least _someone_ on the team who he didn’t really have to censor himself around. Of course that had led La’gaan to relax more around the demonic-looking fire-wielder, which might or might not have contributed to the fact that Eddie’s abnormally warm fingers faintly tracing the invisible outlines of the tattoos on one of his shoulders was _much_ more distracting than it should have been.

“Can I ask why? Or is that an ‘atlantean secret’?” Eddie teased. He couldn’t seem to resist trying to get a laugh or even just a smirk from La’gaan; really, his joy was contagious.

La’gaan snorted at him before retorting, “Are the horns permanent? Or are some of the details of your shifting ‘secret’?”

Eddie laughed before casually slinging an arm around La’gaan’s shoulders, his tail lazily weaving through the air behind him. Sometimes it was like Eddie just couldn’t keep his tail still; if someone knew how to read the body language it tended to give away his mood every time. And the fact that it was in constant, if lazy, motion now just proved how ridiculously relaxed he was. Something else La’gaan appreciated about Eddie’s company: Kid Devil cared as little about formality as he did.

“A ‘secret’ for a ‘secret’ then? I can totally do that,” the younger teen grinned.

La’gaan lightly nudged him with an elbow (though he honestly didn’t mind if Eddie kept his arm right where it was) and said, “You first. You started it.”

Eddie arched one bright white eyebrow as his eyes briefly brightened a little more, then dimmed so the glow wasn’t borderline blinding. “And I asked first.”

“Your shifting is just about you. My tattoos are about more than just me,” he playfully snapped. To say the least, La’gaan thoroughly appreciated the fact that he could jokingly snarl at Eddie and not be taken seriously at all. There were few others he could really relax around like that.

Eddie rolled his eyes over-dramatically and said, “ _Fine_. Have it your way Mr.-most-people-are-shark-bait.”

“I said that about _Jaws_. That movie was terrible by the way.”

Eddie, theater brat that he was, gave a wicked grin. “If you think _Jaws_ is bad then you’re going to hate _Sharknado_. They made three of them.”

“And you’re dodging the question,” La’gaan pointed out. He was tempted to bring up that there had been three sequels to _Jaws_ (a fact that he only knew thanks to Eddie’s overabundance of movie knowledge), but he also knew better than to get Eddie started on talking about movies— really, he could go on for hours.

An over-dramatic sigh. “Fine. Take away my fun. No they’re not permanent and I could shift them away if I want. I’m just so used to having them there that it feels weird when they’re not. Not as weird and disorienting as it would be if I shifted away the tail though. Pretty sure that would screw with my balance.”

La’gaan considered a moment or two, decided ‘to hell with it’, and said, “You’re so weird.”

“And you’re my friend. So what does that make you?” Eddie returned without any hesitation.

“The ‘normal’ one.” The sarcasm was practically dripping from his tone.

Eddie snickered. “Okay Mr. ‘Normal.’ Will ‘Your Normal-ness’ humor me by explaining why you have invis-o-tattoos?”

La’gaan was tempted to roll his eyes, but he knew it was unlikely that Eddie would be able to see the expression. (Oh the joys of having solid red eyes; never mind the fact that there was a subtle differentiation in shade between his irises and the rest.) “It’s due to the level of training from the Conservatory.” Thankfully he’d already explained about the Conservatory of Sorcery to Eddie, so he didn’t have to get into explaining the details. “When you get past a certain point in training the tattoos get…”

“…Don’t know how to translate it?”

“Mmm… ‘hyper charged’?” La’gaan chanced. He wasn’t often open about instances when he wasn’t certain about language choices, but Eddie had made it abundantly clear that he wouldn’t criticize him for it. (Then again, Eddie was one of the few who had thrown himself into learning Atlantean just because of the two atlanteans on the team.) Shrugging it off, he continued, “Thing is, when the magic is that… ‘charged’ it anchors in the tattoos. Sort of like a permanent touchstone or a way to focus things. And since that anchor is in the body, the magic— sublimates?— the tattoos so they’re hidden. Makes it harder to target them in a fight and impossible to see when not in use.” That it made it easier for skilled magic-users to hide went unsaid.

Eddie cocked his head to the side and some of his hair fell forward to brush across La’gaan’s shoulder. “…But they show up when you’re fighting,” he said, pointing out the obvious.

La’gaan snorted. “That’s because I’m using it in pufferfish-mode, you oblivious goldfish.”

True to form, Eddie laughed. He never seemed to be fazed by essentially being called a doofus. Then again, Eddie never seemed to have any problem with laughing at himself. It was one of the various things that had originally annoyed the hell out of La’gaan, but he’d grown to find entertaining. “Okay, okay. So that was a dumb comment. My point is that you only really seem to use them in pufferfish-mode, so the whole sublimating-thing seems kind of pointless otherwise.”

This time La’gaan couldn’t keep himself from rolling his eyes. Judging by the way Eddie snickered, he noticed (and La’gaan was _not_ going to think about the way it felt like his heart stopped for a moment or how flattering it felt that the younger teen noticed something that subtle). “It’s because I’m more of a brawler. You _know_ that. _Yes_ , I know more than just how to go into pufferfish-mode. I usually-”

“-just don’t want to?” Eddie grinned.

“Oh shut up,” La’gaan retorted, though it was all too obvious he was trying not to laugh. There was no point in denying what was true though.

“So okay, humor me,” Eddie said while casually resting his chin on La’gaan’s shoulder. He looked entirely too amused.

“What now?” La’gaan mock-growled.

“If the more experienced magic-users of the Conservatory have invis-o-tattoos, and you’ve got invis-o-tattoos but Kaldur’s tattoos _aren’t_ invisible… does that mean you’re the more experienced magic-user?”

“…Technically.” La’gaan had been hesitant to answer, but at this point Eddie was entirely too amusing.

The glow from Eddie’s eyes brightened again and faded back down. “Soooo… You’re the magic-user with more experience, but you’re a tank who doesn’t like relying on your magic all that much; and Kaldur is the magic-user with _less_ experience who… what? Just didn’t put in the time? Or…?”

“He dropped out.” True, La’gaan tended to be defensive when it came to Kaldur’s actions— particularly because Kaldur was one of his closest friends on land— but he knew he could trust Eddie with the information without him being obnoxious about it. _‘Or at least too obnoxious.’_ It was plainly obvious that Eddie was trying not to cackle about some joke that he perceived about the situation— and that he was trying not to laugh out of deference to how seriously La’gaan took the fact that Kaldur had dropped out.

Eddie started to say something, and then stopped several times as he thought better of what he was tempted to say. Finally he settled on, “I promise that I’m never going to say this in front of anyone else— but does that make him the ‘beauty school drop-out’?”

La’gaan almost choked on air for the first time in his life. “ _What._ ”

Eddie shrugged, his tail echoing the action in a vague motion that La’gaan had come to interpret as meaning ‘I don’t know.’ “Dunno if you’ve noticed, but it seems like there’s this unspoken code that all atlanteans have to be ridiculously hot. I would say it’s something in the water, but since you live in the ocean I don’t think that idiom really counts.”

La’gaan stared at Eddie as if he’d grown another head. Having vague feelings about Eddie that he really didn’t feel like examining in any great depth was one thing; having Eddie make a blanket statement that implied by proxy that Eddie thought _he_ was attractive was an entirely different school of fish. “Did you hit your head recently? Because I think you might want to get that checked.”

“Why _La’gaan_ ,” Eddie said, his tone teasing and fond, “are you going to try to tell me that you think Kaldur isn’t pretty?” Oh he _knew_ exactly where La’gaan’s mind had gone to, him and his damned self-esteem issues about how he looked, and the snarky fire-wielder had chosen to deliberately derail that thought as quickly as possible.

“I am _not_ getting into this with you,” La’gaan insisted.

“Is it because of his cheekbones? I bet it’s because of his cheekbones.”

“Remind me again _why_ I’m friends with you?”

“Because you think I’m hilarious,” Eddie grinned. “That, and I don’t take you any more seriously than you should be. And I’m not afraid to pick on you without being a pain in the ass. And I’m freaking _amazing_ to be around in winter.”

“You’re a living furnace who’s going to send me to an early grave by saying things that aren’t true,” La’gaan retorted.

Eddie blinked. “What did I say that wasn’t true? That Kaldur’s a ‘beauty school drop-out’? Or that I’m hilarious?”

“You said that ‘all’ atlanteans are ‘hot’. Pretty sure that’s overreaching.”

“Okay, fine. All the atlanteans _I’ve_ met. Happy?”

La’gaan felt both amused and annoyed. “In case you haven’t noticed fish-guts-for-brains, _I’m_ atlantean.”

“Yeah, and? I did say _all_ of the atlanteans I’ve met are ridiculously hot. Just because you’re covered in green scales and fins doesn’t automatically exempt you from that.”

Well that confirmed it. Eddie was just downright crazy. There was no other explanation. “I think you need to get your eyes checked.”

“And you need to have a little trust. Besides, when have I ever lied to you?”

“Every damn day about your past— through just not talking about it.”

Eddie hissed. “Okay, yeah, got me there. Let me rephrase. When have I ever lied to you about my opinion about you or the others?”

The fact was never, but still… La’gaan snorted and looked away, but didn’t try shoving Eddie away from his shoulder. “You’re going to kill me one of these days. You’re going to say something like that and I am going to _die_ because _you_ don’t have the sense to shut up and not say things when you shouldn’t.”

Eddie shrugged. “Be annoyed at me all you want. You can’t run— or swim— from your hotness forever. And when you get it through your hard head that you’re not ugly, I’ll be there to tell you I told you so.”

“…Shut up.” Despite his words, La’gaan felt warm— and it wasn’t because of Eddie’s natural excessive heat.


End file.
